The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

by Michael Chabon
USA

Background of the Author

Michael Chabon is an acclaimed, bestselling author who's won the Pulitzer

Prize. He's known for several books, including The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, and for his
work as a screenwriter on Spider-Man 2 and John Carter.

Born on May 24, 1963 in Washington, D.C., Michael Chabon spent part of his
childhood growing up in Columbia, Maryland, a planned community meant to promote
socio-economic integration and religious diversity. His parents divorced in 1975, and with
his father moving to Pittsburgh, Chabon was raised primarily by his mother afterwards.
During his youth he became an avid reader of comic books and "genre" fiction while also
following major league baseball, particularly admiring Roberto Clemente.

Chabon attended Carnegie Mellon before transferring to the University of

Pittsburgh, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature in 1984.
He went on to earn his Master of Fine Arts in writing from the University of California,
Irvine. His debut novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, originally his master's thesis, was
released in 1988 and became a New York Times bestseller.

Summary of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Joe Kavalier, a young Jewish artist who has also been trained in the art of
Houdini-esque escape, has just smuggled himself out of Nazi-invaded Prague and landed
in New York City. His Brooklyn cousin Sammy Clay is looking for a partner to create
heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit America - the comic book. Drawing on
their own fears and dreams, Kavalier and Clay create the Escapist, the Monitor, and Luna
Moth, inspired by the beautiful Rosa Saks, who will become linked by powerful ties to
both men. With exhilarating style and grace, Michael Chabon tells an unforgettable story
about American romance and possibility.

There are times that I missed my family so much when I'm longer with them
and also I feel homesickness and I can't stop thinking about them if they are doing
and if they are okay.

Coraline
by Neil Gaiman
England

Background of the Author

Neil Gaiman was born in Hampshire, UK, and now lives in the United States
near Minneapolis. As a child he discovered his love of books, reading, and stories,
devouring the works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, James Branch Cabell, Edgar Allan Poe,
Michael Moorcock, Ursula K. LeGuin, Gene Wolfe, and G.K. Chesterton. A self-described
"feral child who was raised in libraries," Gaiman credits librarians with fostering a life-
long love of reading: "I wouldn't be who I am without libraries. I was the sort of kid who
devoured books, and my happiest times as a boy were when I persuaded my parents to drop
me off in the local library on their way to work, and I spent the day there. I discovered that
librarians actually want to help you: they taught me about interlibrary loans."
Summary of Coraline

Our story starts out when a young lady named Coraline Jones moves into an
apartment in an old house with her parents. Her neighbors include two elderly retired
actresses and a strange man who lives upstairs and trains mice for a circus act. Despite this
weirdness, Coraline is very bored. Her parents work a lot and they tend to just ignore her.
One day, Coraline discovers a door with a brick wall behind it. Seems kind of strange,
right? But get this: when she opens the door later, there's a hallway back there.
Now that's strange. When Coraline goes through the door, she ends up in an entirely
different world: it's kind of like her own, but something's a little off. In the other world,
Coraline has another mother (the beldam), another father, and other neighbors. And bonus,
cats can talk.
Coraline decides this other world is weird (we agree) and so she heads back home.
But when she arrives, her parents are missing: the beldam has kidnapped them, and
Coraline will have to go back into the creepy other world to rescue them. Fast forward a
bit: and, spoiler alert, she succeeds! She gets her parents back and, in the meantime, also
rescues the trapped souls of three kidnapped children who have been stuck in the other
world for a long time. Coraline beats the evil beldam, saves the day, and returns home.
But wait: it's not quite over. It turns out the other mother's hand has followed Coraline
home. Coraline plays one last trick to trap the other mother's hand in a deep well. Phew,
finally the scariness is over. After all this excitement, Coraline is ready to start the school
year; and boy, is school going to seem really tame by comparison.

You must be contented in what you have most of all your family. Because they
are your guardians and they care for you and even though they are busy in their
business but they are still care for you and love. Because without them you are not
here in this world.

The Folded Earth

by Anuradha Roy
India

Background of the Author

The Folded Earth won the Economist Crossword Prize for Fiction for her novel,
The Folded Earth, which was nominated for several other prizes including the Man Asia.
Her first novel, An Atlas of Impossible Longing, has been translated into 15 languages
across the world. It was named by World Literature Today as one of the 60 most essential
books on modern India and was shortlisted for the Crossword Prize. She won the Picador-
Outlook Non-Fiction Prize in 2004.
Anuradha Roy's journalism and book reviews have been published in Outlook,
India Today, Outlook Traveller, National Geographic Traveller, Biblio, Telegraph, Indian
Express, and the Hindu. She works as a designer at Permanent Black, an independent press
which she runs with her husband, Rukun Advani. She lives in India.

Summary of The Folded Earth

Late in this quietly mesmerizing novel, set in a Himalayan hill town in the north of
India, Anuradha Roy describes the crystalline beauty of the peaks in winter, viewed long
after the haze of the summer months and the fog of the monsoon, held in secret for those
who choose to brave the cold: “After the last of the daylight is gone, at dusk, the peaks still
glimmer in the slow-growing darkness as if jagged pieces of the moon had dropped from
sky to earth.” In the mountains, one of Roy’s characters observes, “love must be tested by
adversity.”
 It’s the inherent conflict in human attraction — the inescapable fact that all people
remain at heart unknown, even to those closest to them — that forms the spine of the novel.
In marrying a Christian, the narrator, Maya, has become estranged from her wealthy family
in Hyderabad. But after six happy years together, her husband has died in a mountaineering
accident. Rather than return to her parents, she seeks refuge in Ranikhet, a town that looks
toward the mountains that so entranced her husband. Overcome with grief, she stows away
his backpack, recovered from the scene of the accident, and refuses to inspect its contents.
She can’t bear to know the details surrounding his death.
In a couple, there is possibilities that you have to face because you love your
husband and you cannot find another person to betray your love once even though it
is hard for you to live without him. And you trust him and give your fully support
onto him and respect in all his decisions and actions.
 The Forest of Hands and Teeth
by Carrie Ryan
USA

Background of the Author

Carrie Ryan is the New York Times bestselling author of Infinity Ring Book 2: Divide and
Conquer and the Forest of Hands and Teeth trilogy, and is the editor of the anthology Foretold: 14
Stories of Prophecy and Prediction. A former litigator, she now writes full time from her home in
Charlotte, North Carolina, where she lives with her writer-lawyer husband, two fat cats, and one rather
large rescue mutt.

Summary of The Forest of Hands and Teeth

Once upon a time, a fenced-in village existed in the middle of a Forest infested by the
Unconsecrated (i.e. flesh-gobbling zombies). Enter Mary. She's minding her own business,
washing her clothes in the stream, when her childhood pal Harry pays her a visit. And pops the
question—yup, that question.

Before Mary can answer, the village sirens start a-wailing, which is code for… zombies
in the house. Save yourselves, people. Mary hightails it for the village, knowing full well as she
hustles along that this siren went off because she dilly-dallied at the stream. See, her mom really
wants to find her newly zombified hubby, and Mary knows that because she stayed away too long
her mom probably got too close to the fence while looking for him and is now infected herself.
Bummer.

After Mary's mom joins the ranks of the moany-groanies, Mary's brother Jed kicks her
out of their house (as a Guardian, he's not keen on having to chop off his mom's head if he sees
her in the Forest). So Mary joins the Sisterhood, led by the power-hungry Sister Tabitha. Sister T
can see that Mary isn't super happy about becoming a God-fearing nun for life, so she threatens to
sic the Forest of zombies on her if she refuses to toe the line and act like she likes it.

While cooped up in the Cathedral, Mary finds out her other childhood pal, Travis, has a
ridiculously bad leg injury and the Sisters are taking care of him. Mary visits him every day and
"prays" with him… which means she actually just tells him stories about the ocean. Dreaming of
the beach together means true love for Mary and the Travster, which is too bad since he's Harry's
brother and engaged to Mary's bestie, Cass. Drama.

Harry asks for Mary's hand again, and she says yes. Insofar as this means she can escape
the Sisterhood, this is a pretty awesome development; but insofar as she's in love with Harry's
brother, it's pretty lame.

In the meantime, Mary notices that a girl in a bright red vest entered the village from
Outside and is locked in a room in the Cathedral. She finds out her name is Gabrielle and is eager
to learn more about her and where she's from.

Mary and Travis run into each other at the Hill and have a nice make-out session. Mary
asks Travis to come for her and whisk her away from Harry, but before he can answer, they catch
a glimpse of Gabrielle, who is now a super-zombie and totally freaky. So much for getting to
know her.
 Fast forward to the morning of the wedding (PS: Travis never came for Mary). Instead of
waking up to church bells, the village wakes up to the screaming of the sirens. Turns out super-
zombie Gabby and the zombie horde are attacking the village.

Harry and Mary escape by the skin of their teeth onto one of the fenced paths into the
Forest. They're joined by Travis and Cass, Jed and Beth, a little boy named Jacob, and Mary's
new pooch, Argos. See ya, village, wouldn't wanna be ya.

The gang wanders down the path for a while before stumbling upon another village.
Mary knows it was Gabrielle's village, though it's also been overrun by zombies. While the rest of
the gang escapes into the tree house part of the village (zombies aside, Shmoop wants to go
there), Mary and Travis end up stuck in a big ol' house together. Alone. Ah, shucks.

At first it feels like heaven on earth, but then Mary stumbles onto some old photos and
dresses and becomes super obsessed with escaping the village. Luckily for her, some zombies
finally break down the house door, forcing her and the Travster to get outta there. Thanks to
Argos and his furry jaws of death, Mary shoves Travis into the attic and swims through a sea of
zombies unscathed.

The tireless threesome crosses the divide into the tree house village with a sheet-rope, a
barrel, and some serious climbing skillz from the Travster (who still almost gets chomped to
death by the zombie horde).

Mary and Travis have a heart-to-heart, and Mary realizes that she needs more than the
Travster to be happy. She just can't quit thinking about her ocean. The others agree to head back
to the forest paths once the weather cools down.

You know that phrase about how the best laid plans are meant to be broken? Jacob
accidentally starts a fire and burns down the village, so it's go time—so much for waiting for the
weather to cool down. Travis saves the day by running the rope through Zombieville to the gates,
though he also gets himself bitten in the process. Mary slides down the rope to help him, but he's
already on his way to becoming a zombie. Before Mary slices off his head, he tells her that he'd
already been bitten back at the big house, so he was a dead man either way.

The gang is back to wandering through the Forest, and by this point everyone's depressed
and starving. They come to the end of the path, and Beth about has a hissy-fit.

Mary leaves everyone in the dust and scoots into the Forest to find the ocean. The
Unconsecrated dogpile her, and she'd be dead, except that Jed saves her life. Yep—he decided to
help her follow her dream. Unfortunately for him though, he slips off a cliff and dies.

Mary tries to find his body in a raging river, but falls in and ends up gasping for air on a
beach. Turns out the ocean is at the end of the river (funny how that works). A man comes along
and almost cuts off her head, but she proves she's alive and they end up walking hand-in-hand
back to his lighthouse.
You should always bear it to your mind that your mother will always at by your side
in all your problems in your life that was the mother ability to comfort you ,giving advice
and moral lessons that you need to think if there's a difficult decision that you need to
overcome.
 The Boy Named Crow
by Haruki Murakami
Japan

Background of the Author

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese novelist and translator. An important asset to the Japanese literature of the 20th century, Haruki has
received several noted awards for his fiction and non-fiction works. He was also referred to as one of the world’s greatest living novelists
by The Guardian.
Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki’s first novel was published in 1979 which was a part of The Trilogy of the Rat. The book received the
Gunzou Shinjin Sho (Gunzo New Writer Award). His next publication also a part of The Trilogy of the Rat, Pinball, 1973 was published
in 1980. In 1981, Murakami decided to make writing his ultimate profession and therefore, sold the bar he ran with his wife. The third
part of the same trilogy named A Wild Sheep Chase was published in 1982. Haruki won the Noma Bungei Shinjin Sho (Noma Literary
Award for New Writers) for this book in the same year.

Summary The Boy Named Crow

Is Crow the fifteen-year-old's alter-ego? Is Crow's viewpoint parental or wise? It's certainly prompting the boy narrator to
think ahead, not to run away heedlessly: "Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions..."
The Crow prologue summarizes the narrator's story to come.
"On my fifteenth birthday I'll run away from home, journey to a far-off town, and live in a corner of a small library.
Just as he's said, he stuffs the backpack, selecting essential items, mentions his superior school grades and his withdrawn personality,
and his motherless home--justifications to leave. He's nevertheless plagued by the specter of omens,
"A dark, omnipresent pool of water" and DNA "A mechanism buried inside of you." And then, he turns fifteen, heading to the
island of Shikoku. This government begins a series of q&a sessions. The first interviews the teacher Setsuko Okamochi about a poison
gas incident on November 7, 1944. She and sixteen children went to pick mushrooms and to spend the day out in the hills. All the
children suddenly collapsed unconscious, and she ran to get the assistance of the school. The second interviewee is the doctor Juichi
Nakazawa of internal medicine, who was part of the children's rescue. The adults decided that the plausible explanation was poison gas
from a B-29 airplane. Most of the children awoke without remembering anything untoward except for Satoru Nakata, who remained
unconscious.In the alternating chapters of this novel, the runaway Kafka travels the night of his fifteenth birthday on a bus to Takamatsu.
During a rest stop, he meets a girl, who could very well be his lost sister and who carries a small, heavy suitcase. Kafka (=his new,
made-up name) and Satoko reach Takamatsu by bus, along the way having talked about K's belief in "karma",
"...things in life are fated by our previous lives...even in the smallest events there's no such thing as coincidence."He nonetheless senses
a sort of freedom in being adrift in a new city.

"I'm free, I remind myself. Like the clouds floating across the sky, I'm all by myself, totally free."

He enjoys the day reading and exploring in an elegant, open-to-the-public, private library, and meeting the library assistant
Oshima and the head librarian Miss Saeki before buying dinner and finding lodging. Being alone at his age requires a low profile, so
what is the extent of his freedom?
"I'm free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I really can't understand what it means.
All I know is I'm totally alone. All alone in an unfamiliar place, like some solitary explorer who's lost his compass and his map. Is this
what it means to be free? I don't know, and I give up thinking about it."

He calls his father's house phone, which rings twice.

The next chapter returns to Nakata's predicament. An old man, he is on a governmental "sub city", on account of a mind-
draining childhood accident which made his memory on a par with felines. One of them recognizes Nakata's weak shadow, a faintness
of which Nakata is also aware.
"...you should consider how your shadow feels about it. It might have a bit of an inferiority complex--as a shadow, that is. If I were a
shadow, I know I wouldn't like to be half of what I should be."

Perhaps, Nakata will seek to find the other half of his shadow. Asma wrote: "Is Crow the fifteen-year-old's alter-ego? Is Crow's
viewpoint parental or wise? It's certainly prompting the boy narrator to think ahead, not to run away heedlessly: "Sometimes fate is like
a small..."
In the intro chapter, I first thought that Crow was a real person but it looks like you are right. The purpose of Crow seems to me to give
him courage.
I am enjoying this book quite a bit so far! I like the mysteriousness of it: Why did he run away? Why doesn't he know his
sister? What's with the talking cat? And of course the Rice Bowl Hill incident. It will be interesting to see how these things all play out.
Julie wrote: "I am enjoying this book quite a bit so far!... It will be interesting to see how these things all play out. ..."
It's hard to tell what is real in Murakami especially at the beginning. The reviews sometimes give a little help. The character of Crow
reminds me of an American Indian tale, as if the underage boy goes out into the wilderness to ready himself for his future actions of
manhood. That's only an impression and might have absolutely nothing to do with Murakami's purpose or Kafka's character.
I, too, like the story. I find myself eagerly picking up the book even late at night. I like it because of its airiness. Real life
sometimes seems so bound by routine and by solid forms. This story loosens up some of that gravity. Dare I say 'escapist'? I really think
that Nakata is an endearing character and am wondering what happens to him in particular. Not much logic in the story at times, but it's
fun to follow along with the suspenseful happenings.
 Asma wrote: "The character of Crow reminds me of an American Indian tale, as if the underage boy goes out into the
wilderness to ready himself for his future actions of manhood. That's only an impression and might have absolutely nothing to do with
Murakami's purpose or Kafka's character. ..."
Interesting idea. I can definately see how you'd get that impression.
This is my first Murakami.
It certainly is a good introduction to Murakami.
I read some of Murakami's earlier works of which A Wild Sheep Chase was entertaining. That one also had some
metaphysical stuff, but the story of Kafka on the Shore is a more extended work with two clear threads and a more mature example of
his fiction writing. Yet, there doesn't seem to be anything too difficult about it at all.
Well I finally started on Kafka on the Shore a couple of days ago, and from the very first page the book has been difficult to
get away from! This is my first Murakami and I absolutely love his writing style, simple and yet so..so melodious I would say, for want
of a better word. I'd had this book for so long on my TBR list and I would like to thank this group for motivating me to read it. Will talk
some more about it, later. :)
I definitely agree, Priti. For me, reading "Kafka on the Shore" is like riding inside a balloon, drifting somewhere. About your
word choice of "melodious", Murakami cites the titles of many musical songs of every description. I think that in this story Miss Saeki
too composes a song with lyrics, which Kafka listens to on an LP. Back to reading. Kafka reaches the larger city of Takamatsu, grateful
that adults aren't questioning his daytime presence outside of school. He figures out that the best, inconspicuous places are the library
and gym, and that his freedom and survival might necessitate rule-bending.
Nakata's thread in the next chapter reports on the progress of the investigation into the 1944 Rice Bowl HilI incident. There
had previously been recorded random, similar incidences with school students and teachers even back to the late-nineteenth century in
various countries. According to the investigation of possible causes of sudden unconsciousness, the likeliest is eventually decided to be
mass hypnosis. The poison gas theory has holes in it. The hypnosis theory still doesn't explain Nakata's extended coma, which lasts two
weeks and which leaves him with a lack of all memory.
In chapter 9, Kafka awakes, surrounded by bushes, not knowing where he is and where he has been for the last four hours on
the evening of May 28. His sticky, bloodied shirt tells him that whatever happened was not good. He cleans himself up in the washroom
and phones Sakura. That episode contains common motifs with the rest of the novel. There are the miniature or great woods in which
something extraordinary happens in a great basin or a flat clearing--the collapsing schoolchildren, Kafka's facing his terrifying fears, a
surrealistic community. The clearing is close enough to a sanctuary like a shrine, a cabin, or a school. The reader and Kafka wonder
what had ensued between the time he'd left the hotel to shortly before midnight. Further, the reader is unconvinced of the official
explanation of the Rice Bowl Hill incident. One of the things which I like in this story is Kafka's cat-like, independent attitude, an
adolescent older than his years, who realizes
"...nobody's going to come to my rescue. Nobody..."

Other intriguing things are Kafka's "alter ego" and the alternating chapters between Kafka and Nakata, as if their two stories
are variations on a theme.
In chapter 10, Nakata "aimlessly" lingers with the neighborhood cats in a vacant lot. Now they are a little suspicious of
Nakata on account of a rumored cat catcher in a tall hat and boots. A key phrase here is
"Time wasn't the main issue for him"
Because, like Kafka's recent unconsciousness, Nakata falls into deep sleeps and adjusts to the sequential nature of living by
his taking note of its signs.

The seashore, the forest, the city, the private library, the everyday as metaphor, all are a part of this novel. Also, characters
reveal their life stories through conversation.
One of Kafka's revelations is the memory of his older, adopted sister's picture photographed at the seashore. He thinks of that girl, whom
his mother took away with her, as being Sakura, a new friend he meets on the bus from Tokyo. Similarly, Miss Saeki contemplates a
wall painting, titled Kafka at the Shore, Kafka's sitting in a deck chair and gazing toward the sea. Memories those pictures engender
make their lives more interesting. Something else I noticed about the story is that a setting or a character's words or action echo something
else like it, causing me to wonder whether those places and characters essentially were the same in disguise.
In the next chapter, the teacher who led Nakata and the other students on the outing twenty-eight years ago, comes forward
to make a "confession about that day of the "mass coma" and to add her observations about Nakata's personality.
In the next chapter, Oshima and Kafka contrast some of Natsume Sōseki's stories. Then, during a hair-raising road trip to Oshima's
mountain cabin deep in the Kochi mountains, Kafka learns more about that unusual person.

Don't escape your problems that you have nowadays you must face your problems and obstacle in your life because
every second and hour is very important to you. And it is your responsibilities to take it all.